Books as companions for the insomniac, helpers for the home cook

Nov. 18, 2013

Written by

Free Press Correspondent

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I couldn’t put food on the table night after night without the late Laurie Colwin — or make it through insomniac nights without rereading the cheerful essays that accompany the practical recipes in her books, “Home Cooking” (Knopf, 1988) and “More Home Cooking” (HarperCollins 1993).

She provided me with the revelation that not every roast chicken need be trussed and basted every 20 minutes. She taught me that an occasional exotic (though easily sourced) ingredient like fermented black beans can transform a homely dish like sweet potato pancakes. She taught me to relax in the kitchen.

I’ve always fallen into the category of cookbook collector who reads for style and story more than step-by-step instruction. So, while interviewing home cooks about the cookbooks they’ve saved from their childhoods, I also asked about the favorites they have adopted as adults.

Cookbook love, I learned, is as idiosyncratic as ... well ... love.

Colwin may be my favorite, but she’s unlikely to appeal to Lisa Groeneveld, 41, co-owner of a Barre computer company.

Groeneveld came relatively late to a love of cooking, spurred by the realization, she said, that “I couldn’t feed my kids hot dogs dipped in mayonnaise.”

She learned cooking the way she learned business and computer skills. “I’m very detail-oriented, I take a lot of notes, learn the techniques and I need to know the science behind what I do,” she said.

She found the perfect match in Cook’s Illustrated, the magazine known for its science-lab approach to recipes. In the test kitchen, the cooks test different ingredients and techniques to establish the “best” way to make everything from cornbread to pad thai.

For Azur Moulaert, a confident Burlington home cook, detailed recipes are beside the point. He would rather start with an idea, then mix-and-match recipes from an array of cookbooks.

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For him, it’s “photos, photos and more photos,” that make a great cookbook. “I’m a right-brain person. Food is first a visual experience. ... The writing and recipes are not that important.”

Cookbook author Marialisa Calta, 62, of Calais, disagrees. “The good writers — there are a lot of bad ones out there — make you hungry.” She mentions famous food writers including M.F.K. Fisher, but says the authors of the “Joy of Cooking,” Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, do not get enough credit for an engaging style.

“They’ll write, ‘Pound the meat until it looks like Dali’s watch,’” Calta said, “It’s fabulous and assumes the reader is savvy enough to get the reference. Or they’ll write, ‘Someone defined eternity as a ham and two people.’ There are just a lot of gems.”

For Jodi Whalen, co-owner of Burlington’s August First bakery and restaurant, favorite cookbooks are ones that embed recipes in the stories of their creators and that show how “cooking brings people together.”

“I’m attracted to heirloom recipes, something that so much love and care has been put into,” she said.

“I’ve been using recipes from Cake Ladies, where the author spent time going from town to town asking who is the ‘cake lady’ in town, you know, like ‘you have to go see Mary because her coconut cake is the one everybody wants.’”

When she bakes Cake Lady recipes for August First, she said, “It’s special to be able to tell a customer that this is a cake that a woman in Georgia has been making for 40 years.”

For all these different sorts of cooks, cookbooks are not just resources but “recreational reading,” as Ginger Nickerson of Montpelier puts it.

“I read them for fun, for bedtime reading, for thinking about what I’ll make when I’m planning a party, for the stories that come with the recipes,” she said.

Laurie Colwin's Scotch Broth

Colwin writes: “Scotch broth is a soup almost no one makes from scratch anymore … It is extremely easy and good for you,” and she’s right. I alter the recipe in one way, by substituting my homemade chicken stock for some or all of the water called for. That makes a richer soup with a more complex flavor. But water is fine.

Peel the garlic. Chop the onion roughly. Put the first four ingredients in a pot and bring to a simmer.

Colwin writes: “Put a cover on the pot, the flame tamer underneath it and go about your business. Hours later, strain the soup, cut up the meat, put it in a jar or bowl and let it sit in the fridge.” (A flame tamer is a metal gadget that sits between the pot and the burner, dispersing the heat and allowing a slow simmer).

Discard the vegetables. When you are ready to finish the soup, skim the fat from the broth, put broth and meat in a pot and add the remaining ingredients. Simmer half an hour and serve.

From More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, HarperCollins, 1993

Maple-Walnut Pie

Nina Church of Morrisville swears by this use of Vermont maple syrup, sometimes syrup made from her family’s own maples